Heretofore, the ability to fabricate large scale multiplexed liquid crystal displays was very difficult. This difficulty was primarily due to "cross-talk" effects, and the necessity to quickly refresh the slowly responding liquid crystal medium. Large scale multiplexed displays notoriously have had problems with "cross-talk", i.e., the unwanted sensitizing of partially selected display elements. This problem results from the small root mean square voltage ratio between the "on" and "off" elements achievable in a large scale multiplexed liquid crystal display.
As displays become larger, a new problem appears. Most device effects do not have intrinsic storage. The display must therefore be repeatedly scanned to update; this is often with typical display effects done at 60 Hz (per frame). The result for large area matrices is a small duty cycle for each individual row or column. Most display media only partially respond to small duty cycle voltage information and the resulting effect is only a fraction of the dc equivalent voltage. The result is low contrast or brightness. As the display matrix gets larger, the duty cycle gets less and less and optical performance gets poorer and poorer. The result is a very poor (below commercial standards) optical performance as the X-Y matrix gets larger and larger.
These two problems have severely limited the ability to provide large scale multiplexed displays, and to date, no one has produced a device which has high contrast, wide viewing angle, which is easy to fabricate, easy to operate, and which has low cost.
The present invention has developed a low cost, large scale multiplexed, visual display device that has resolved the aforementioned problems, while providing a new liquid crystal device having many advantages over the prior art.
While the present invention is concerned primarily with large scale, thermally addressed multiplexed devices, its new light absorbing method is easily applicable to devices which are not large scale, and which do not utilize multiplexing. The subject invention is believed to have wide application in the field of thermally addressed liquid crystal displays, and is not considered as being limited to any particular device or system.